


The Rolling Fire

by CynaraM



Series: Friendship is Unnecessary [2]
Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Action/Adventure, Forgiveness, Gen, Horror, Humor, Introspection, Occult, Possible developing friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2378690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johannes Cabal and Leonie Barrow pit themselves against a necromancer's catastrophic plan; the story has so far involved a train, a seminar, tomato soup, an underground lair, significant blood loss, some gunfire, the elephant in the room (the events of the first book), and Leonie and Cabal coming to terms with each other, a little.  It is, of necessity, set between the books <i>Johannes Cabal the Detective</i> and <i>The Fear Institute</i>.</p><p>It is, at least in my head, preceded by my story "Revere thy Roof, and to thy Guests be Kind" but the link isn't a strong one, and their relationship at the beginning of the story stands much as it does in the canon with a gentle divergence by the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Seminar

Leonie Barrow sat in the wood-panelled room and arranged her notes on the table for the third time. She had arrived half an hour early for her Advanced Abnormal Psychology seminar. She was debating arranging them again when Cartwright entered and sat next to her with a smile. “Morning.’ He motioned at her books with his chin. "Admit it, Leonie, they make half of this balderdash up. And I could have written my thesis in the time it took to track all of this mess down.” The subject had been difficult to research, covered in papers and obsolete books spread throughout the university’s libraries and archives.

“It would have taken you far less time if you knew your way around the index card system, George.”

“Lies and calumnies, Leonie."

She couldn’t commiserate. She had already owned the relevant texts. They all dealt with English necromancy: the Bayeux tapestry skeletons; the Puritans' suspicions of John Dee and Francis Bacon; the “undeath” conceits of the metaphysical poets; the debated presence of raised soldiers at Culloden; and, finally, modern necromancers. 

Leonie had come to understand that her own interest in the criminal psychology of necromancers was... tolerated. A young woman interested in tabloid criminology, said the older professors with a paternal smile. Well, it would do until she left academia and settled down, they thought. A woman who reads about dead bodies and the freaks who play with them, whispered her fellow-students. Well, some girls love a dangerous man, they laughed.

She could only thank heaven that her own acquaintence with Cabal and the Princess Hortense disaster remained very quiet; the Senzan authorities were sitting on it for some reason of their own. Being “the necromancy girl” was enough notoriety for her. 

If she had interested herself in something more practical or more feminine - kleptomania, maybe, or juvenile delinquency - she might have found support, but her choice of subject had isolated her more than she had expected. She unconsciously raised her chin. She was a Barrow, and she wouldn’t let them see her fret. She started to mentally review the texts. 

Some few of the articles touched on the topic of Johannes Cabal. Cabal was an obscure figure, seemingly ageless (or simply unusually young, suggested a more pragmatic scholar; he couldn't have been active for even ten years). He was suspected of theft, murder, and raising the dead. The last was mostly conjecture based upon the nature of the thefts, as Cabal was not, so far, associated with the classic mass raising of revenants to assault the living. Leonie had learned in Senza what the scholars only assumed; Johannes Cabal was a necromancer, if not the kind they expected to find.

The young don came in with a group of students, dropped his notes on the table, smiled at Leonie, and pinned a wanted poster to the wall, beaming. Leonie flinched. It was Cabal, more or less; blond, slim, pronounced features - perhaps too pronounced; Cabal’s nose was long, but not a beak, and while he was given to glaring, she couldn’t picture this hot-eyed glower. It struck her again how normal he really appeared: a priggish banker waiting for his mother-in-law, not an arcane master of the undead. This was, she thought wearily, going to be a long class.

Conversation was safely factual at first but warmed as private theories were aired and trust established. Leonie said little initially, but watched to see how the others spoke until she received a direct invitation. “I hope you don’t mind, Miss Barrow, but I believe you have an interest in necromancers. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on how Cabal fits the classic psychological profile?"

She marshalled her thoughts. “Not at all. First, I’d repeat Faulkner’s idea that necromancy is an attempt by a deranged man to gain some control over his world. This theory is a sound one, and there is nothing in the information on Cabal to contradict it.'

"Gardener added his own observation that a corpse is a passive and unthreatening subject for those, like necromancers, who are frightened by the living. There isn't enough information to comment on Cabal here." Though she could write a paper based on her personal experience, if she dared to publish it. 

"A raised revenant is a tool the necromancer can use to create fear and chaos, making his presence felt and showing his power to the world. Cabal, however, has avoided the grand gesture” except for the explosions on the Princess Hortense, she thought, "and attempted to disguise his activities when possible.”

The young don was confused. “Are you suggesting that Cabal is not a necromancer?”

“No; I think the assumption is a fair one, based on the books he has stolen," and the corpses he has raised, she added silently. "I would suggest that he is more intelligent and controlled than the classical necromancer and better at covering his tracks. He may plan to raise an undead army, but I doubt it.” She leaned forward, speaking with intensity, caught up in the argument she had made mentally many times. "Perhaps he practices necromancy towards another goal?”

The young don smiled. “You may be right, Miss Barrow. Unfortunately, the data is so sparse that it is difficult to form any kind of well-supported theory.” 

She sat back, internally stung by the implied criticism. “Yes, of course.”

The seminar moved on from Cabal after that, and Leonie contributed little, not wanting to make a spectacle of herself twice. When it was over, she left grimly amused. She particularly wished that Cabal had heard Cartwright's speculation on the practice's correlation with impotence and sexual deviance, and Dobbs' suggestion that it demonstrated a premodern understanding of the world. 

After class the don approached her in the quad; “Miss Barrow. I’m sorry if I was abrupt. Have you ever thought of writing on modern necromancy?”

“I have thought of it, sir, but I can’t say I’ve been encouraged to do it.”

"It isn’t a subject favoured by the old guard, but that’s all the more reason for a reappraisal of the evidence. I don’t think there’s been a proper survey of the latest cases from an academic perspective."

Leonie thought of the set, desperate face seen over a gun barrel; her father’s head bloodied from a tire iron; the astonishing letter saying that her soul had been “surplus to requirements” with a postmark from not so very far away. “I’ll consider it, sir. It’s a sensational subject, and if one wishes to be taken seriously there are professional risks in entering that field.” She had even turned down a few opportunities to write on necromancers in her coursework lately; a few dull papers on kleptomania, etc., wouldn’t kill her, and perhaps she could stay in the running for a scholarship.

He nodded. "Look, the Sir E-R-F is allowing interviews with Arthur Twiccian and some other high-profile patients on an upcoming day; a few select scholars and journalists will be allowed in. We’ve no faculty who are interested, so I could put in a good word for you, if you liked."

“Yes... yes, thank you! That would be a very attractive opportunity. Please do.” Finally! She had wanted to interview the imprisoned necromancer since the news of his arrest. Necromancers were rare, necromancers alive in custody were doubly so, and access to them was strictly controlled. 

The young don was dazzled by her broad smile as she took her leave. Miss Barrow had become reserved since her interests were discovered, and this glow of interest and gratitude was rather stunning. He had hoped to see it when he persuaded the professor to allow the seminar. He sighed dolefully; he couldn't keep pulling necromancers out of his hat for her.

***

Two weeks later Leonie walked down a hall at the Sir Eldon Ritz-Fitzon Asylum. She wore soft brown tweed, a cream blouse, flat shoes, and immaculate but minimal makeup; her “city” clothes, bought in the summer. Her hair was restrained but not scraped back. She carried a soft notecase with leather handles containing a clipboard with questions (was there a triggering event that interested you in necromancy?), pencils, and pens for notes. She was a lady, and she was here to work. 

This was the third time she had been permitted to interview a necromancer, if one excluded her conversations with Cabal, which she did. Permission had never been given, and she had never asked any questions, unless one considered a "how did younger to very fucked up" uttered behind a barrel in an alley an interview. She could have tried harder on the Hortense, she supposed, but between the murders and the way they invariably got bogged down in sniping at each other, she had learned very little of his work and his attitude towards it. Except that one day: and her professional detachment failed every time she thought of writing about it. 

The building was a Victorian edifice with high ceilings, rounded corners, and heavy metal fittings. A frieze of maenads (really, thought Leonie) crowned the walls at the entrance. The superintendent had sent an orderly to guide her to the correct department where a desk-clerk took her name and showed her to a half-full waiting-room. "Tea, miss?” 

“Thank you.”

Leonie sat down and opened her case to review her questions for the dozenth time. She knew them by heart. She had originally planned to collect enough interview data to base her thesis upon it some day, though she was becoming discouraged. She was reviewing question #3 (what is your motivation for engaging in the raising of the dead?) when something penetrated her absorption and her blood ran hot and cold. 

She had heard a voice from the clerk’s desk. “I am here from the Evening Mail to interview Arthur Twiccian.” Her hand stiffened around her pencil, and she fought conflicting desires to look over her clipboard and to sink down behind it in counterfeit absorption. She stayed very still. 

“My interview is to begin immediately.” A blond man stood at the other end of the room, plaguing the desk clerk. There was no sign that he had seen her. Apparently he had survived the wreck of the Hortense. She couldn’t say she was surprised. She rather hoped he had been inconvenienced on his journey home, but he appeared much as ever: black suit, Gladstone bag, blond, subtly uncivil. What the hell did he want with Twiccian?


	2. The Caged Necromancer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal has an interview with an imprisoned necromancer, as planned, and then an impromptu discussion with Miss Barrow.

Cabal turned and scanned the room; he disliked having his back to a room of strangers: mostly journalists scribbling on notepads and clipboards, and no police among them that he could identify. Just then the orderly arrived to walk him to the room where Twiccian was being kept for the day. They reached a metal door guarded by two large men; Cabal’s Gladstone had already been searched and found free of weapons or suspicious items.

The door closed behind him, and no sound of a deadbolt followed: excellent. They were trusting to the prisoner’s restraints and the guard. At a table sat a thin, greasy man with lank grey-threaded hair and a grubby white uniform. Twenty-three people, police and civilian, died in the struggle to bring him in. His paranoia would have been legendary even among necromancers, if he had been careless enough to allow a legend. Cabal’s research had taught him that Twiccian had something greater than a necromancer’s professional caution: an outright agoraphobia and a dread of danger that leaped lightly over the definition of “neurotic” to execute a graceful two-point landing on “insane.” It hadn’t kept him safe, in the end, although the location of his laboratory was still unknown.

“Who are you? Stay away! Guards!” Brown eyes darted over Cabal searching for a weapon, a false move, a flicker of arcane power.

“Shut up. I’m here to propose an exchange.” He regarded Twiccian with distaste. The bony hands worked on the manacles constantly, and he threw frantic glances to the door, as if he dreaded the guards answering his summons. He needn’t have worried. The guards had better things to do than come running at the call of a necromancer, especially if he had fussed this much about his other visitors. Cabal wished he had been present for the Weekly Mail’s interview.

“I have something you’ll want. In return, I want the location of your library."

“No! No. You’ll kill me. Whatever you give me will kill me. And if I tell you how to get into my lair, I can never go back there again! It wouldn’t be safe. You could fill it with demons or set a disintegration spell or a portal to a plane of immediate disintegration, or set a keyed ward against me… I won’t give you ideas. Stay back! You’ve been sent by my enemies! I told them this would happen, I TOLD THEM THIS WOULD HAPPEN.”

Cabal paused for a moment. Twiccian was speaking of magic of which Cabal had barely heard as if it were commonplace. He was, really, the greatest occult mind in the country, possibly the world. A pity he was as unbalanced as a gug on a beach ball.

“I don’t care if you live or die as long as I get to loot your lair first. If you’d rather be killed by a guard for your crimes against good grooming, it’s up to you. Convicted necromancers’ life sentences are historically not long or happy ones. I can figure out the location, given time.”

Twiccian shrieked for a while longer, and then he hemmed and hawed and cringed and cackled until Cabal was barely containing his anger; the miserable old bastard was going to keep this up until they ran out of time. He knew Twiccian wanted what he had, and it had been enough trouble to get it.

Finally Cabal was permitted to place the object on the table and back away while Twiccian shot a terrified look at him from among his hair - then held a hand over the thing and put his attention elsewhere for a minute. Cabal had been expecting him to examine the offering and was nonplussed. Certainly he couldn’t identify it simply by thinking about it, could he? He was briefly glad that he had brought a legitimate item to trade.

When Twiccian opened his eyes, they held a canny gleam. He whispered, so softly Cabal could hardly hear him. “Very well. But you’d better run, little necromancer. The Rolling Fire will engulf my base within days, taking the books with it. And the rest of this.”

***

Cabal broke off his recriminations in mid-sentence and turned to leave. He stood at the door a moment, composing himself to face the guards while Twiccian smirked at his back. He opened it to find, not the guards, but Leonie Barrow in mid-step backwards. Cabal dropped his Gladstone bag, staring at her for a moment. Then he looked annoyed, completed his exit, and closed the door behind him. Leonie ceased her backwards scrabble and nodded to Cabal. “What did he mean, ‘the rest of this’?” she asked.

“What are you doing... Of course."

“I heard you growling at him: something about ‘a sizeable patch of Northern England’?"

“It’s not my concern. How long were you listening at that door?” The hallway was empty and dusty: deserted, if only for a minute.

Leonie eyed him. “Since nearly the beginning. I saw you in the waiting room and bribed the guards to let me eavesdrop. They thought I was a reporter trying to scoop you. They sauntered off for tea.” 

“Your skills are diversifying nicely. What’s next? Extortion? Allow me to inform you that I am planning to leave this asylum right now in the firm knowledge that you will inform the police of the prisoner’s threats."

“And what will the police do?” She had said it almost automatically to contradict Cabal, but as she said it she realized it was the truth. She added more slowly, “we both know the police were astonishingly lucky to bring Twiccian in, even with the deaths it cost. Do you think the police’s miserable little department can counter something he’s set up? And do you want to risk it?” Leonie was loath to feed Cabal’s arrogance, but it would only take the simple truth. “I bet you could do it.” His eyes narrowed, but she saw him run the odds and draw himself a little taller. 

“The flames will not affect any site of particular interest to me.” Noted, thought Leonie. You don't live near him. Cabal compressed his lips, as if to bar the door against further slips.

“All right. I won’t ask you to consider the lives lost-‘ his brows drew together and his lips compressed “-but what about the books. You do want those.”

"I am not going within a mile of his lair without at least a week’s preparation.” 

"And in in a week?" 

“In half that time a circle, the radius being the distance between Twiccian's lair and here, will be annihilated under a spreading torus of flame. This facility will be destroyed, and Twiccian will walk free."

“Won’t he burn too?”

“Apparently not. He didn’t specify how, but I believe what he says about the safety of his own unpleasant skin. I believe he sees himself scuttling through the flame and ash to safety.” 

Leonie mentally drew that circle. It encompassed farms, villages, and at least two small towns. Cabal was many things, but he was competent and a student of the arcane. If he had really decided against it, he would be gone and she would be tied up in a broom closet. She had an idea. It was mad. “What if you had help?"

Cabal was quick to understand; one eyebrow slid up offensively. “What do you think this is, a school trip? Don’t be absurd. What is to stop me from heaving you into one of Twiccian's oubliettes and leaving you there?” He picked up his Gladstone bag, ready to leave.

A dozen thoughts ran through her brain in that instant. She was half-sure that the books would tempt Cabal to break into Twiccian’s lair; he might bother to halt the ritual while he was there, if it wasn’t too much trouble. Then there was her other half-certainty, the one that remembered how quickly and decisively he could turn tail. A wave of frustration rose within Leonie. The old toads at the university, her loneliness, her damaged father, the desire for something to test her and let her succeed or fail on her own merits, all of it brimmed her eyes for a moment. And she could learn things, seeing Twiccian’s lair, even if she couldn’t publish it now. 

Leonie stepped in Cabal’s way with with a tight smile and stared into his eyes, grey under the hospital lights and faintly surprised. “You’re going to go anyway, Cabal. You might as well accept my help. As for the oubliette, I’ll take my chances; I won’t even threaten you with the police. This is more destruction than you could create in ten years."

...

He insisted on gathering supplies and doing it alone. “I give you my word that I will be at the Dalmoor station tomorrow, Miss Barrow. I refuse to go in without the correct tools for the job, and you can understand why I guard my privacy.” 

She had been half-hoping to learn where he lived. She had immediately discarded any idea of shadowing Cabal without his knowledge; he would just lead her to East Anglia or Cornwall and lose her in a hamlet somewhere. 

So, she had her interview with Twiccian. He answered none of her questions, raving about danger and murder until she asked about Rolling Fire. Then he clammed up and shot darting glances from her to the door in silence. Sometimes she would catch him with a tiny smug smile on his face.

She went for tea and a bun after, and then the railway station. She bought her ticket and asked the clerk if her stern German husband (“going out of town on… on business, he said, but he didn’t say where...") had bought a ticket earlier that afternoon. A worried smile and a ten-pound note got her the destination. She didn’t imagine that was the end of the story, but it was another pin in her mental map. 

She felt a twinge of conscience. Was this justified by scholarship, or by the injuries he had done her, or was this just vulgar curiosity? And she was on treacherous ground; she had seen how dangerous he could be when cornered. Despite his cursory sort of decency, she would never intentionally place herself squarely between Cabal and his freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would be remiss if I did not credit my husband as co-author; his agoraphobic necromancer character is here on loan, and I appreciate the favour. I'll put him back where I found him, my love.


	3. Tedmoor Station

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the train station to Twiccian's base: preparations and debates.

The next day she met him at the Tedmoor train station. She had reconsidered no fewer than five times and had barely made the train. 

She had half-expected him to arrive with a large unexplained package, or perhaps dressed in something other than a fussy black suit, but no: he had added his stick and a long black coat and scarf, but hadn’t even surrendered the blue glasses, despite the cloudy day, and his gleaming black shoes looked more ready for a courtroom than a constitutional. His expression was a hair grimmer than usual, but that was all.

Cabal they walked out of the station. The day was grey and raw and an intermittent scotch mist beaded Cabal’s black coat and Leonie’s felt hat with water. 

“Understand that I am not responsible for your safety.”

“Understood.” 

“And that you may die.”

“If you say so, Mr. Cabal.” Her voice was serene, or perhaps dryly amused. He shot a glance at her. 

“You have no experience.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘no' experience.” Was that a dig at him? It seemed likely.

“No experience of this kind. Unless you have made a practice of penetrating arcane lairs?” She remained silent. They came upon the village green. It held a small gazebo furnished with benches, empty on this miserable day. “Let us sit.” Leonie agreeably followed him to the seats and they occupied far ends of a bench. Cabal stretched out a peremptory black-gloved hand. “Let me see what you have brought.”

Leonie started to unstrap her bag, but Cabal pulled it from her hands. “You have no couth, Cabal.” He ignored her and rifled through it, commenting as he went. 

“Electric torch… good… notepad… I wasn’t going to read it, Miss Barrow, there’s no need to be rude. Multiple-bladed penknife… massive: is it your father’s? Never mind. Matches… tea bags? We will likely miss tea time. I hope you can stand the privation.”

“They’re normally in there.”

“And a thermos….”

“Tomato soup.” 

Cabal looked up briefly, but saw her face and decided not to pursue the matter. He continued. “Measuring tape… hm… book… Jane Eyre… Lip paint? Face powder? I had thought you were a serious woman, Fraulein Barrow.”

“Shut your face, Cabal,” she replied with equanimity. “Those are normally in there, too. I wasn’t planning to fix my lipstick on your account.” Cabal opened his Gladstone which was packed nearly full, and added several packages to her shoulder bag: first aid supplies, rope, chalk, a flask of water. “How mundane.”

“One prepares for the mundane because the other challenges generally kill one outright, Miss Barrow.” He had brought a torch for her, but discarded it as heavier than hers. “And this.” He added a tiny pistol, ammunition, and an extra magazine. 

“What the hell” asked Leonie “is that.”

“That, Miss Barrow, is a gun. This may astonish you, but not all the creatures in Twiccian’s lair will be amenable to an offer of tomato soup and a literary discussion. I hope to avoid violence, but we would be fools to be unprepared. It is only sensible to arm us both. Now see the unusual safety....”

“That,” interrupted Leonie, “is the smallest gun I have ever seen. Are you laughing at me, Johannes? It’s the size of an infant's hand. I have seen prize strawberries that were larger."

He didn't entirely understand. “It is a perfectly sensible .25 Browning automatic pistol. I have carried it myself on several occasions,” he added with a forbidding look, daring her to say more, “when my Webley .577 was impractical.”

“It’s a “Baby” Browning.”

“And very suitable for a novice. Have you ever fired a gun before, Miss Barrow?"

"My lessons began the day after your carnival left town." Her father, exhausted and grim, showing her the parts of the gun; teaching her safety; taking her out for target shooting, like he had taught young officers for decades. He had never wanted to teach her, and she had never asked. “I suppose I might have brought one myself, but all of dad’s are at home in Penlow on Thurse."

The moment of half-teasing amusement was gone. Leonie repossessed her bag, and Cabal turned to look at the village green, pulling his scarf tighter. “At the asylum I traded Twiccian an item for information on how to locate and access his library. At the same time, he gave me some details on how to disrupt the Rolling Fire. After all, if it goes off, he is set to lose nearly the entire contents of his base. The alternative I gave him will be much less dramatic and, I hardly need say, less destructive.’ There was no applause. He continued. 

"However, Twiccian is an unreliable source at best. If he cared that much about his lair, he wouldn’t have set the ritual in the first place, and he may have given me incorrect information, either to sabotage me or because he just couldn’t help himself. Who knows what goes on in that rat’s nest of a brain of his.” He thought he felt a look from Leonie. 

“I am going in because I suspect that his library is unparalleled. I could spend years looking for that information elsewhere, and I would risk a great deal to have it now. I suggest you consider your own reasons and whether they are sufficient.” She nodded. Lecture over, they found the road out of town and began to walk.

Contrary to appearances, Cabal had given thought to Leonie Barrow’s presence on this expedition.

On the one hand, she was utterly inexperienced; on the other, she was intelligent. She was narrowly moral and inflexible, but she was cool in a crisis. Her reflexes might be slowed by pity, but she could potentially be cannon fodder and might be a slower runner than he. 

Perhaps most seriously, her death would attract the attention of Frank Barrow, for whom Cabal also had some reluctant respect. Becoming the retirement project of a vengeful, intelligent, experienced investigator with police connections had no allure for him, he thought with a mental shudder. 

All of these were overridden by simple practicality. He needed every advantage he could get. He was forced to agree that the threat must be attended to immediately, and that it was outside the abilities of the proper authorities. One hundred years ago the government would have had a crack occultist squad on the scene with sensitive animals, specialized warlocks, and powerful diviners all assessing the situation; then the tactical witch hunters would go in and neutralize the threat. These days the department had a cramped basement office stuffed with filing cabinets and a few desks manned by agents, of retirement age or rejected from other departments, glumly regarding the dead ends of their careers.

He had pried into a number of fellow-necromancers’ arcane workshops, but Twiccian’s lair would be in a different class, and he was unwilling to breach it alone. He felt a persistent twinge at the idea of Miss Barrow’s involvement, but he ignored it with the deft ease of practice.

***

After an hour’s silent walk out of town Leonie was thankful for her stout boots, and Cabal’s shoes had lost their shine. He began to pay attention to their surroundings, as if looking for landmarks. They turned twice and struck out across a field which held a promising-looking set of standing stones. 

Cabal did not walk towards the tattered ring, however, but walked past them into the next field, stopping in a featureless area chiefly distinguished by the rude health of the thistles. There was no path, no rocks, but a few young trees straggling across the field proved the land wasn’t normally under cultivation. Even on a summer’s day it wouldn’t have been a pleasant spot to view the standing stones.

Cabal was striding back and forth among the thistles, emitting a background noise of German curses and exclamations. “Achh… my trousers… _au_! _Verdamnt_ … You can help any time, Miss Barrow.”

“You haven’t told me what I’m looking for. Perhaps you should have worn boots, you know.”

“A wooden well-cover. Aaaaah! That hurt. Yes, here it is.” Leonie picked her way through the thistles to where Cabal was standing. A weathered lid made out of thick, broad boards lay under the weeds and grasses. Its grey weathered surface was indistinguishable from the underlayer of dead grasses, and it would have been invisible if they hadn’t been looking for it. They levered up the lid and saw a stone well shaft dropping deep below them. There was a strong smell of damp and the stones were greasy with water and slime.

Leonie peered in. "Oh, the arcane romance of the occult. Oh, the dark majesty."

Cabal kicked at the surrounding grass. "I'm sorry if it isn't living up to your expectations. Now see if you can't find a place to tie a rope."


	4. The Sanctuary of Naberius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonie and Cabal enter Twiccian's lair, discuss English Satanism, and encounter some residents.

A knotted rope secured to the cover’s hinge allowed them a straightforward if fraught descent. Cabal went first, less out of chivalry than impatience. Leonie followed him out of a half-thought that he might enter without her and leave her squatting at the top of the well shaft in the rain. The well was far deeper than she had thought, and her arms were shaking by the time she arrived at the recessed ledge in the shaft’s side. “How do you suppose Twiccian went in and out?” she asked. "I don’t suppose he left the lid open with a rope hanging down.”

“Either there is another entrance he was unwilling to share, which is likely, or he has some other way of ascending and descending the shaft. Will you please stop crowding me, Miss Barrow?”

“I’m not doing it on a whim, Cabal. I can’t stay dangling from that rope indefinitely, and this is the only place to stand.” Quarters were undeniably close. The ledge was less than a foot wide, and the (presumed) doorway it fronted was only a few feet across, all of it slippery and uneven. Leonie looked for a handhold and found a thin, slippery crevice to slip a few fingers into. There was a smell of mildew and water, and, this close to Cabal, laboratory chemicals. Leonie kept the other hand on the rope as he shone a torch on the stone and clutched his Gladstone bag. 

Cabal looked over his shoulder at Leonie. “You should arm yourself.”

“With what?” He did not rise to the bait. "And, more seriously, Cabal, how. I’ll fall into the well, and god only knows what’s down there. Here, if you take my bag, and… no, that won’t work.”

“Here.” The torch went into his pocket, and after some turning and moderately terrifying jostling he gingerly put his wrist on her lower back and steadied her against the wall. 

“Thank you.” She let go of the rope and, reluctantly, her crevice and sorted through her bag for the gun. She checked the magazines again and tucked the spare in her pocket. “You do realize that if I shot someone in the head with this - an open question, given the sights - there’s an even chance the bullet might not get through the skull?”

“The rounds are not quite standard. In any case, it is better than nothing. In a moment, I will open this door; let us proceed in slowly and quietly. Do you have any questions?”

“What do I do if something tries to kill us?”

Cabal gave her one of his disquieting smiles. “What I do, Miss Barrow. Survive it.”

Cabal turned to the doorway, focussed on a particular stone, and spoke a phrase in an ear-punishing language. A rune on the stone flared briefly, and the back wall of the recess, hinged on Leonie’s side, drifted inwards. 

The room was high and dim. It reminded Leonie of a village church, if a village church had been designed by a melodramatic Satanist. It was built of roughly carved stones, and thick pillars vanished in the dark above. Torches burned in sconce, shedding an infernal light. She realized that Cabal was no longer by her side at about the moment she saw four animated skeletons emerge from behind the nearer pillars, their bare bones scraping and tapping on the stones as they came. She set her back against the closing door, eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

Not a film, she reminded herself. Seconds count. She pulled the gun out of her pocket and fired; the first shot went wide, nicking a column. The second drilled a tiny hole through the grinning skull of the approaching monster. Damn Cabal, what the hell was she supposed to do with a toy like the Browning. If she was torn to pieces while he made for the exit, she would haunt his Gladstone. The shuffling, grasping nightmares drew closer. If she turned away and made along the wall, there was a bare chance she could reach….

She was making for the nearest torch when a sound like shattering plaster exploded behind her. As she yanked at it, trying to free it from the sconce, she turned to see Cabal demolishing the skeletons with his weighted stick. His face was calm as he fractured the skulls and weakened the spine at a couple of points; his step was light and mobile, and he evaded the clutching bones. The skeletons still reached towards her, as if they couldn’t quite understand what was happening. Two were down before she turned, and she was able to distract the last as Cabal staved in its skull with a neat blow. 

“Excellent work, Miss Barrow. You, standing gormless in the doorway, were a very convenient distraction. You are already proving very useful.” His neat black suit was speckled with bone fragments.

“Those were Twiccian’s page boys. The footmen will not be far behind, with perhaps an underbutler. You might wish to position yourself behind a pillar.

She managed “you bastard,” rather weakly, swallowed her pride, and hid herself. Cabal ignored her and brushed white splinters from his suit.

A trio of new skeletons arrived from the right side of the pillared hall. Armoured and armed, they were altogether more imposing; the two in front wore leather armour over their dry bones and held swords. The third - Leonie swallowed - the third had three heads. All three were more mummified than skeletal, and each head wore a glittering crown. They - it - also carried a sword, but it held a staff of office in its other hand.

It stepped forward imperiously, gesturing with the now-glowing staff, about to call eldritch powers from the very fabric of existence.

Cabal shot its ankles out from under it, one at at a time, and took a test tube of clear liquid from his pocket. The two soldiers rushed at him, swords scything through the air. Cabal uncorked the tube and slashed the air with it, sending an arc of droplets glittering in the torchlight. The spray hit with little blue flares, and the skeletons’s swords went spinning off as significant sections of their frames crumbled at its touch. Meanwhile, the three-headed leader had pulled itself to a sitting position with its staff across its lap, and Cabal levelled the Webley, bursting its crowned skulls into bone meal with three evenly-spaced bullets. He closed with the remnants of the other two carefully and dismembered them sufficiently to render them inanimate. He bent to look at the remains of the three-headed crowned skeleton. “Baroque monstrosity. Revolting.”

Leonie approached and peered at them, not touching a thing. “They aren’t terribly effective.”

Cabal straightened and swatted at his coat again, sending bone splinters flying on to the floor, the remains, and Leonie’s face and suit. "Normally Twiccian would be here and his will would direct them; as it is, they are barely sentient.’ He looked around the high pillared room appraisingly. “We appears to be in the former meeting-place for an infernal cult. This would be the space for communal gatherings - see the altar at the far end - and those doorways probably lead to infernal vestries and cloakrooms, tea rooms for the Lunch Club for Elderly Satanists and suchlike. They must have had a decent engineer among the faithful.” 

Leonie walked down the centre of the hall, brushing Cabal’s bone splinters away; it was churchlike in dimensions, but the floor was bare except for a great circle in the centre. The far end held a massive altar made from the same stone as the monumental circle in the next field. Waste not, want not, she thought idly. Closer, she saw a roughly carved idol hulking in the shadows beyond the stone. 

“Naberius” said Cabal, joining her. “A marquis of Hell. He gives skill in arts and sciences, especially rhetoric, and restores lost dignities and honours.’ He seemed to be reciting, then added “well, I suppose not every Satanic cult gets lord Beelzebub or Astaroth. You’ll notice the form he takes.”

“That is a rooster, then?”

“Yes. A demonic rooster who gives elocution lessons. He appears ‘in the form of a crowing cock and flutters about the circle.’ While edifying the locals on watercolour painting, one imagines."

Leonie turned from the crude bird-statue. "It doesn't look like Twiccian bothered much with redecorating. Is that... a notice-board?”

"Hm. I think you're right.’ They crossed diagonally to the side-wall where an ancient cork-board was littered with pieces of paper and card. Cabal scanned the curling yellow papers. The writing was faded but still legible; a mess of curlicues, right angles, and swooping lines. "It's a very debased dialect of a demonic language. That one's about a sabbat. And it looks like they were planning a church jumble sale."

A gurgle of inadvertent laughter escaped Leonie. "Really?"

"These people were English villagers; the affection for fetes and fundraising teas will prevail.” 

Leonie ignored the slight pejorative emphasis on ‘English’. "Satanic crocheting and white elephant booths?"

"More or less. And an evil ladies’ flower committee. Enough. Let us go on.” He turned as if to go, but Leonie took a firm grip on his sleeve, spinning him neatly back. He wobbled slightly, and twiched his coat out of her hand. “What?"

“Cabal, do not open one more door before telling me will be behind it. Where are we going?” He was about to refuse, but grudgingly laid out their next steps. “And do you expect more skeletons?”

“No. Firstly because, as I said, the majority of Twiccian’s servants require his active direction. Secondly, anything we encounter from here on in will be more resilient than this… macabre window-dressing.”

“You reassure me immense… what was that?” From the flickering shadows beyond the pillars, Leonie had heard a dry scraping sound. Elsewhere, it would have been a mystery, but she had heard it too often in the past five minutes to be mistaken now. It was the sound of bone on stone but magnified and multiplied; hundreds of great bones grating and clicking over rough blocks. Cabal had his bag in his hand and ran without a backward glance, and Leonie followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight delays may occur as a result of a) writing action scenes, which always take me longer, and b) my needing a few days to assimilate the events of _The Brothers Cabal_ , which threw me for a loop. My pre- _Fear Institute_ Cabal is much more severe, and I needed to locate him again. However, work continues apace, and I'm still planning to have it all up within a couple of weeks. Comments and encouragement do help!


	5. Takkata-tak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal and Leonie are pursued and must get through an obstructionary door.
> 
> "Could you hurry this up? A skeletal abomination will arrive shortly.”

Takkata tak takkata tak takkata tak….

Pursued by a torrential clatter of bones, Leonie and Cabal fled. Cabal led them to a corridor of fresh stone, more finely-finished than the sanctuary’s. It was dim where they entered, but a cold antiseptic light shone from the far end. Reaching it, he turned left unhesitatingly. Chest heaving as she fled, Leonie looked for a flame or bulb but couldn’t see one; the light seemed to well from the very air, a strange sourceless and featureless brilliance. Behind them the rushing rattle continued, barely slackening, still overtaking them, but the sound changed as it entered the hallway. 

Tak-ka-ta tak….

Cabal was keeping ahead of her, Gladstone bag held close to his body, running easily like the veteran of subterranean footraces he was. He led them unerringly into passages left and right, short and branching. The sound came ever closer, an army of skeletons, an undead maraca band, a thousand angry typewriters, a platoon of rattlesnakes. Then, it diminished. Cabal held up a hand, and they paused, gasping, listening as the rattle faded. Cabal nodded: the pursuers weren’t following them with magic, then. They had taken a wrong turn and would, with any luck, stumble around in this mißgeburten maze until they happened upon one of the many traps Twiccian had reluctantly warned him against. He must have spent years seeding this labyrinth with nasty little surprises. 

An explosion sounded, not so far away, and Leonie jumped a little. Then, both let out the breath they hadn’t realized they were holding. 

“Did that kill them?”

“Incapacitated them, most likely. There may be a few, but as you’ve seen, individual skeletons aren’t a great threat when uncontrolled.”

“Onward, then, and to that door you mentioned?”

“In….” Cabal had started to say “indeed,” but even as Leonie had spoken, they had heard a slow clatter from not so very far away. Tak ka ta tak.

Cabal took to his heels immediately, looking rather grimmer than before. The reason was apparent when they quickly reached the end of the hallway. It terminated in a massive oak door, framed with writhing figures. 

The clack and grate of bone was growing louder again, though it had slowed noticeably. Leonie gestured Cabal towards the door, and walked backwards a few steps, tilting her head the way they had come. Cabal nodded. Although it went against every instinct, she moved back towards the sound.

It was continuing to slow, she thought. Her boots made a little sound on the stone floor, rubber composite against grit and rock. The lack of shadows was upsetting, after a while. She turned a corner, checking over her shoulder first to make sure she could find her way back. A long corridor, the next corner, and the sound, measured but unceasing, was loud. Back against the wall, two deep breaths, and she risked a glance. Her face went slack with the horror of it, her muscles loosened, and she ran, adrenaline firing her blood and her boots striking loudly on the stone.

Tak-ka-ta tak, tak-ka-ta tak.

She took the last corner with her hand on the stone to spin her into the final hallway. Cabal was crouching by the door, fuming. 

“Cabal-!”

_"Good. You’re both here."_

The snap of Cabal’s head to the side showed that this was a new development to him as well. The voice had issued from the door, or more specifically from the frame, carved with a hopeful English Satanist’s dream of three infernal houris. The lips did not move, but the eyes glittered in a conscious way, and the tilt of the heads, though unmoving, was expressive. The voice was three voices in chorus.

_"The necromancer Johannes Friedrich Cabal and the necromantrix- no, just the student Leonie Abigail Barrow. Not a necromancer, then.”_

Tak-ka-ta tak, tak-ka-ta tak. 

“Cabal, we need to get a door between us and _that_.”

“No doubt.’ He turned to address the door. “What is the nature of the challenge.”

Leonie grabbed his upper arm and pulled him towards her. “You mean you don’t know?’ she snarled. “Do you have any idea what’s bearing down on us?” Tak-ka-ta tak, tak-ka-ta tak.

“Ouch. Not now, Miss Barrow.”

_“The challenge, Johannes? You’re hoping I’ll play to your strengths: poverty, chastity, and disobedience?”_ The statues seemed to heave without actually moving. _“And for Miss Barrow - faith, hope, and love? Not chastity. No, you must each offer me a sin.”_

Cabal had waited with a barely-polite air of leashed impatience through the doorframe's purring: “could you hurry this up? A skeletal abomination will arrive shortly.” 

_“But I get so bored.”_ The voice giggled. 

“I don’t imagine you put Twiccian through this.” 

_“You aren’t Twiccian, child.”_ The statues smiled secretly. 

“You’re a leftover from the Naberius cult, aren’t you? A parlour game for playing at evil. All right, guardian: I have killed.” 

The statues, stationary, looked considering. Takkata tak. _“In self-defence, Cabal. Mostly. Not good enough.”_

“I have lied.” 

_“So you have. Nice technique, but dull.”_

“I have trafficked with Hell for necromantic power.” 

_“Pretty good, I’ll grant you.”_ They heard a hiss, as of indrawn breath. _"But it’s not the rarest sin you have on your soul. Let’s hear you say it, Johannes.”_

Cabal removed his hat and brushed at the brim absently. “It has been a busy few years. I really cannot imagine which incident you mean. We could be here all afternoon playing guessing games.” 

_“You know. You knew. It was at the top of your mind earlier today."_

Cabal paused, his face blank. The silence stretched out as he replaced his hat and straightened it. Leonie watched him narrowly. “The soul-trafficking? Yes, all right, I admit it. I trafficked in souls.” 

_“And considered it a fair cost for your ambition,”_ prompted the motionless smiling lips. 

“Yes!” There was nothing equivocal in Cabal’s voice or stance. The word was a thrown gauntlet. 

Takkata tak, takkata tak. Leonie’s ears strained towards it. It sounded as if it were in the hallway with them already. 

_“Very well. That will do. Miss Barrow.”_

At her name, Leonie collected herself (with one last glance over her shoulder: takkata tak...) and stepped forward. “I don’t think I have anything on that scale to offer, Madam.” 

_“No matter. Give me what you have, girl.”_

“I stole sweets when I was a child.” 

_“And upset about your mother’s death, and so on. Really, try again."_

“I resent my father’s protectiveness and care for me.” 

_“You’ll have to do better than that.”_

"Really?’ Leonie inclined a Cabalesque eyebrow. "Isn’t that in the decalogue?” 

“Yes,” cut in Cabal, “honour thy father and mother. I don’t see what else you’ll get, guardian. You must be realistic about Miss Barrow.” 

They paused desperately, but the doorway was silent, the gemmed eyes more enigmatic than ever. Tak-ka-ta tak. Loud, so loud! Cabal held his stick, the Webley was in his jacket pocket, and he was raising his eyebrows meaningfully at Leonie. 

She turned to the door again, imploring. "Oh, all right… damn it, I don’t know, what do you want? You can read our thoughts? Then find something good enough, and find it now." 

_“A fresh one, then. You did something yesterday of which you were ashamed.'_ Leonie’s heart sank, and she felt a blush flood up her cheeks. _“Yes, that. It makes your heart beat so sweetly, child,”_ murmured the triple voice. 

“I….” Damn, but this was awkward. And possibly dangerous, very dangerous. 

Takkata tak, takkata tak. Tak ka ta tak. It was unbearably close. 

“I bribed the clerk at the train station to find out Mr. Cabal’s destination yesterday.” Cabal’s gaze shifted from the doorway to her with an almost audible click. His eyes passed over her once, in assessment. Leonie had rarely felt more of an idiot, or more frightened. “I wanted to know” she insisted. “For my studies… because he wronged me….” 

_“Yes?”_

“Yes!” 

The doorway sighed. _“It’s not very good. But I suppose it’ll have to do."_

“So let us through.” 

_“Now the necromancer must invoke the door with his blood and his power.”_

And around the corner came the object. It affronted the eye so thoroughly that, for a moment, its nature was unclear. The dazed brain pieced together a massive sharp, snakelike head that filled the corridor, followed by a broad bony body that scraped both walls as it came. Tak ka ta tak. One side of the head had a gaping eye socket, so large that Leonie wondered for a glazed moment if she could climb into it, and long, spearlike teeth that curved sharply back in its jaw. The other side was terribly shattered and dissolved away, the recent damage exposing whiter bone beneath. 

Was it, then, the skeleton of a snake? No, for the bones were not a snake’s, but the assembled and conglomerated bones of a hundred, a thousand men and women. Its face was plated scapulae; its spine, pelvic bones; its ribs, masses of ulnae and radii curved together, and the teeth were sharp, splintered femurs. What physical or arcane substance clotted the mass together even Cabal did not know. 

Tak ka ta tak. It gained another yard down the hall, struggling to fit its spines through the confining corridor. 

“Twiccian didn’t mention blood” said Cabal, returning doggedly to the task at hand. Comment on the giant snake-bone-monster would, he felt, be superfluous. 

_“I’m mentioning it now.”_ Cabal uttered a few words that had not been covered in Leonie’s German-for-academics course, and set about fiercely rolling up his coat sleeve and unbuttoning his left cuff, exposing a few inches of white wrist. He produced a flick knife from his pocket so quickly that it could have been a conjuror’s trick. One of the statues had a sculpted hand extended; Leonie and Cabal hadn’t seen it move, but neither had they noticed it before. Cabal made a measured incision, and a stream of blood ran from the wound. 

Tak ka ta tak. The beast heaved closer. 

“Cabal, do you know when we might get through?” He glanced over his shoulder. The dreadful creature was terribly close now, close enough for them to smell the old bone and the fresh acid that had eaten at its substance. “It’s about forty feet away now, in case you’re too busy to check." 

_“More blood, man of power. The lady has none, so you must sacrifice for both. Or leave her here.”_

Leonie kept her eyes on the clashing pile of bone grating towards them both. She did not want to see the look of calculation she was sure to find if she glanced back at Cabal. If he was going to bolt through without her, she didn’t want to see his face when he did it. An agonizing minute passed, as the monster clashed towards her and she strained her ears for any hint of an opening or slamming door. She stepped backwards slowly, giving ground as the terrible fangs came closer and closer. She disdained to draw the Browning. She would reach the door soon. 

Then, a painful grip on her wrist, a flashing rune, a growled word designed to be pronounced by a being with two subsidiary tongues, and the door opened with a fading triple giggle. Leonie and Cabal threw themselves through into darkness, the awful breath of the serpent behind them. 


	6. Sandwiches in the Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal recovers and decides what to do about Leonie Barrow.

Fifteen seconds later Leonie had her torch out and shining around them. It was good for its size, but she’d have preferred a floodlight. The beam illuminated a hallway blessedly free of anything living, undead, or mobile. It also showed a necromancer-shaped pile at her feet; she had wondered why he hadn’t started cross-examining her yet. Her eye fell on a limply extended forearm, the sleeves still rolled up; two deep slashes streamed blood on to the floor. 

Leonie knelt and reached for her bag: pressure dressing first, then shelter, stitches, and delaying the discussion of recent revelations as long as possible.

***

The first room on the left was a library. Some shelves held impressive leather-bound tomes, some of them ratty little pulp novels, but many of them were empty. Either the cult hadn’t been an academic sort or Twiccian had culled the collection for his personal library. The room was furnished with stout wooden furniture carved with the skeletal motifs that had already started to wear on Leonie. Generally, persons of taste do not require so many skulls on their end tables. 

Cabal had come around a little during the bandaging in the hallway, muttering about hemorrhage and tachycardia. After a short reconnaissance Leonie had towed him to his feet and half-carried him onto a richly ornamented library table. He tried to sit, but Leonie found a withering look somewhere and fixed it on her face. “Be my guest. There’s not enough blood left inside you to go around, and gravity is the only thing keeping it in your brain. If you fall you can stay on the floor.” The little death’s heads that edged the table seemed to grin in agreement. 

Cabal subsided and amused himself by diagnosing his degree of blood loss based on his heart rate, dizziness, and the drunken spin of the room. “Normally,” he quavered, then cleared his throat and tried for a stronger tone. “Normally the sacrifice is symbolic.” Leonie reentered the room carrying his Gladstone, stick, and hat, and he realized he had been talking to himself. 

“Right,” she said brightly. “Water, then I believe I’ll attempt my first sutures.” 

“Time was of the essence.”

"That was not a criticism. It was, in fact….” Leonie was at a loss for words, or perhaps distracted by the table’s dancing bone inlay. “Thank you for not leaving me. I’m going to look through your bag for your water flask.” Cabal did not reply, but enjoyed the feeling of the table gently heaving beneath him like a river-rocked punt on a summer afternoon. Leonie found the flask and the tin box containing an eccentric collection of first aid supplies near the top of the Gladstone, and did not investigate further.

The next half-hour was not very pleasant, but at the end of it Cabal was stitched back together, fully conscious, and complaining. Leonie had lost her patience twenty minutes before, and the memory of Cabal’s heroic sacrifice was less oppressive already. “Next time do us both a favour and slash yourself somewhere you can stitch up.”

“This is not my first blood sacrifice, Miss Barrow. The more accessible spots are not ideal for several reasons.”

“Please don’t tell me, Cabal. I’m going to sit on that relatively normal chair with the skull tapestry and have my lunch. I do not wish it to be enlivened with the details of blood-sacrifice for beginners. Particularly not with my tomato soup.” 

"Help me to a chair first. I should eat something, and I'm draped all over this dreadful object.”

“All the furniture is dreadful.” They installed him in a carved armchair with a penurious little cushion in the seat and lavish writhing skeletons protruding at uncomfortable angles. He demanded his Gladstone and, bending carefully, withdrew a neatly tied package. 

“Sandwich, Miss Barrow?”

"No thank you, Mr. Cabal."

She sat down a distance away, opened her vacuum flask, and poured herself a cup of soup, but then stood and walked to the bookshelves. Lurid epistolary novels rubbed shoulders with gleaming leather and spidery scripts. Would it be better if he asked her about the spying, or if he didn’t? He wouldn’t have forgotten it. She considered what she would do when she got back to the university. Continue to suffer the thinly-disguised amusement of the department and buy a deadbolt? Move to America and work as a waitress?

Cabal unwrapped the sandwiches. There was a rushing sound in his ears and the room tended to undulate, but it was time he came to a decision regarding Leonie Barrow.

She had spied upon him - and worse, had done it halfway competently. He had made contingency plans for the discovery of his home, of course, but it was a threat of the most serious kind, and it had provoked an on the-spot reassessment of her status vis a vis his 'to-do’ list. It would have been simple, perhaps even excusable, to have left her to an unhappy but unsurprising fate. She would not be his first companion dragged beneath the waves or vanished in the night or devoured by a nameless excresence far underground. He recalled one bluff Great White Hunter type pleading and whining as he was cornered by frog-men, the coward. Unlike Miss Barrow.

At some point he had decided that Leonie Barrow would survive Twiccian’s lair. He wished he had informed himself of the decision, but it had come upon him fully-formed as he bled at the door. He had watched her giving ground one pace at a time, calm and erect in her sensible boots and walking skirt, and the metaphysical annoyance he called a soul had tugged at him. 

At first, regaining his soul had made little difference. As time passed, however, it had made itself known in unexpected ways: a disgust of certain effective and rational measures; a subtle softening that annoyed and disturbed him. It pained him, at times and drove him into action that did not advance his researches. And his soul appeared to… incline towards Leonie Barrow, he thought irritably. It revived a little around her. So he had pulled out the knife and slashed a second time, knowing it would likely weaken him dangerously, and he had persisted when his vision fogged and the room spun. 

That implied something else; he had trusted her with his safety and their mission while he was unconscious. His professional caution noted this development and tried to calculate the odds that this trust had been intentionally instilled as part of a complex game of revenge and betrayal. The percentage was fairly low, but the possibility was filed for future consideration. He returned to the main question.

Why had he done it? Not, he thought, the uncanny resemblance which troubled him less the more he saw of her. Next, he checked the vault door behind which he kept his id. It was still firmly locked, and there was not a sound from the other side. He moved on to examine his thoughts relating to Miss Barrow. He found a wary respect for her; that had been there for a while. Next to that he found his acknowledgement of her reliability, intelligence, dry humour, and bravery, and his approval of her increasing reliance on nontraditional means to achieve her goals. Then a filing cabinet containing details of their encounters and what he knew of her life.

Unexpectedly, at the end of the mental hallway he found an ashamed wish for her good opinion. Ludicrous. Not even a thought - a feeling. And propped up against it, a bit of curiosity: he wondered if she played chess. What was that doing there? He didn’t play chess, hadn’t had anyone to play with since Horst died. The second time, he added absently. She would be a good player: tough, clear-sighted, and sneaky. He wanted to have that game. 

The thought winged through his head and brought a flock of others, seemingly out of nowhere; he wanted to talk to someone without pretence. To have a few thoughts, from time to time, that were not concerned with death and its defeat. How much time could that take? How could that be a betrayal? It would not be unpleasant, to know such a person.

He pulled himself back to the library and looked at her, sitting in a squat little chair in her bloodstained skirt, drinking her soup. There would be no chess. His life did not permit social engagements; they were distractions, and not required by a rational mind. Additionally, even if he had not begun his acquaintance with Miss Barrow by staring at her like a stunned frog and quickly progressed to extorting souls at gunpoint, she did not approve of his profession. Also, his personality did not invite acquaintance, by nature as well as intent. Sentimental maunderings. How could he deal with the threat she posed? What was her motive? Revenge? He needed more information. Or should he just feed her to the crypt-worm? No, no, that wouldn’t serve anymore. "Why were you attempting to locate my home, Miss Barrow?"

Leonie smiled wryly at her soup. "At the time I believe I was rather thinking of it as a lair. It's not so bad to track people to their lairs. Still, I suppose you don't live somewhere like this?" Cabal shook his head slowly. Quickly, and he might have fainted.

“Well. I could say I have an academic interest in you and your habits, and that I thought of it as part of my studies. That’s true, but… I study criminology because.... " She glanced at Cabal, expecting impatience, but he was simply looking at her from his horrible chair. She had never discussed this before, and wondered where to start. “Suddenly, I was damned. What do you do when you’re damned?’ She shrugged, eyes distant, seeing those awful days. 

"My father was shattered, and I couldn’t stand it. I considered trying to find you then, but I had nowhere to start, and no plan if I succeeded. I decided to try to understand and get away from home. Father. And there was the idea of following in his footsteps. So, criminology.’ She put her cup down on a ghastly bone-themed doily.

“After the letter, you made even less sense. A soul is valuable currency. What could move a man to steal souls at gunpoint, and then what could move him to free them?” She looked at him, hard, and he looked back, carefully without expression. “I don’t expect an answer from you, but I mean to understand if I can.’ Measured and resolute, she added “and no, I don’t expect it to make sense or to solve anything.” 

Cabal thought for a moment, then replied slowly. “My reasons are not your business, despite the events of that April. Those were not the means I would have chosen, but they were the ones available. At the time, I did not regret them.”

"No." It was one thing to know it, and another to hear it from him. She had, she reflected, almost fallen into thinking of him as human.

A silence fell. A dead silence that was uncomfortable to Cabal, who was normally immune to silences containing various admixtures of pain, dismissal, and exclusion. If she continued to pursue him, he would have three options. He did not want to move his home; it had been difficult the first time, and he was not certain the a procedure could be repeated. Second, he suspected that he simply could not employ the simple and practical measures so disliked by his soul, at least not on Miss Barrow. The third option was radical, even bizarre. He felt light-headed and his vision went grey. Time to increase blood flow to his head.

Across the room, Cabal suddenly bent forward, putting his head between his knees. "It was to recover my own soul,” said the blond, bent head to the stone floor.

"What?"

"I had sold it to Lucifer for the power of necromancy. It is a prerequisite for invoking the rituals that raise the dead." He inspected the masonry. “It is not, you understand, an uncommon transaction among those of my profession. The deal I struck called for the immediate removal of my soul. Over time it became clear that I required it back, and that awful year with the _dammt_ carnival was how I regained it." His hands were cold. Had he ever done anything like this before? His vision swam and his soul, worryingly, seemed pleased, but he might as well continue. "In that year I collected precisely two souls that were not already heading to Hell, both in Penlow on Thurse. I contrived to return both of them."

Leonie was astonished by this outburst of information. She groped for a question to continue it before he changed his mind. "And did you retrieve your soul?"

"If I had not, I would not be in this pleasant spot;” he bit off the words. It was unclear whether he meant the land of the living, Twiccian's lair, or short a pitcher of blood. He slowly eased back to a sitting position and looked her in the eyes. "I don’t believe in the kind of answers you want, Miss Barrow. I doubt you will find the insight you wish.” He disliked gambling, but the die was cast.

Leonie Barrow thought carefully about her next words. When she spoke, it was a question: “do you like what you do, Cabal?"

He looked at her steadily. "I am good at it, and it is necessary.”

“I think you have a reason for doing it. I’ve thought that for a while. Not power, not some sort of celebrity, nothing like that, or you’d act differently than you do.” She remembered advancing this theory in her seminar. It was different here, saying it to him. He stared her down, offering no reply, and she had a sense of fetching up against a wall. She thought to herself, I wonder who died, Johannes Cabal. 

She had no proof, nothing beyond the lack of visible motive and something in his manner, but as she thought it, she felt it was right. And it should make no difference, she thought, but perhaps it does. And she was staring at him, and he was starting to look annoyed.

Why not be honest in exchange? “I don’t think I like what I do. It’s making me wretched. I’ve been dragging myself through the term because I’m curious, and because I’m too pig-headed to let them see me sweat. That’s probably why I did this bizarre thing, insisting you bring me here. My professors have decided I’m a featherhead obsessed with necromancers, and my fellow-students generally agree and think I’m some kind of crackpot, or… or necromantic groupie, writing love letters to characters like Twiccian.” 

“You are certainly not that. Perhaps I could act as a character reference.”

Leonie chuckled, and then laughed as the image developed in her mind. It became a belly laugh that echoed among the shelves. She looked at Cabal, and found him… neutral. Which was actually a substantial improvement over his usual expression. He was sitting in that hideous chair, dark wood carved all over with bones and gemmed skulls with inlaid teeth, and it set her off again, picturing him interceding for her with the black-robed head of the criminal psychology department, Cabal all irritable brow and skull-headed cane and mortician suit, until she was gasping with laughter and her eyes were streaming and she was sitting on the floor. Perhaps there was a little delayed reaction in her laughter, but he just watched her. There was something bracing about Johannes Cabal, she thought. He didn’t dismiss her. And he kept saving her life. Surely that counted for something, even in a man who committed ghastly perversions. 

“No cutting remark, Miss Barrow?” Her reaction was beyond him, though she did not appear to be filled with vengeful fury just now.

“I may be getting tired of taking cheap shots at you, Cabal. What kind of sandwiches are they?”

“Tinned ham and pickle.” 

“Mustard?” Leonie quirked an eyebrow from the floor.

“ _Du meine Güte_ , no.”

“Sold.”


	7. The Lair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Instead, he tore a strip from it to leave him with a square of light card, and this he proceeded to fold into an origami swan.”  
>  _Johannes Cabal the Detective_
> 
> Leonie and Cabal reach the lair, encounter the ritual they came here to defeat, and get themselves into further trouble.

They ate quietly, Leonie eventually opening her book. Soon Cabal's head sank to one side, and his breathing changed in the silent room, his hand resting gently on the pocket with the Webley. Leonie listened for movement as she read but heard nothing. Perhaps Twiccian didn't want the monsters so close to his private quarters. She wondered how Cabal managed to look severe even in sleep. No snores, no dribbling, just a suggestion about the eyebrows that you were wasting his time. 

Upon waking he sent a sidelong look at Leonie. She was politely ignoring his nap, but she hadn’t turned many pages. He stood carefully; he felt peaky but clear-headed. He withdrew a bundle of short wooden rods from the Gladstone. They were flattened on one side and rune-carved, and he tossed them experimentally on the table. He examined them closely, frowned, and did it again. Leonie approached the table as he worked. “This complex has wards which shield it from external divinations, but if I were Twiccian,” - and he eyed Leonie for insulting expressions, but she merely gazed back innocently. Very innocently. “- I would wish to employ them inside. The difficulty is that a pile of thaumaturgically significant sticks looks very much the same as a random sample."

“What does it suggest?"

“That we are about to burn to death,” said Cabal.

“Now?”

“Soon. Possibly.” He shrugged. “It is far from an exact science.” 

“But given our errand, perhaps we should take it seriously.”

“Agreed. Our next destination is Twiccian’s private quarters; it is where the ritual was set and where it must be disabled." And where he expected to find the most interesting books. He laid his notebook on the table and drew a map. "This is not to scale. It is based on Twiccian's description. We can agree that he has, so far, left out some points of interest. The corridor will lead us to a series of storage rooms….”

***

After twists, turns, a very tight spiralling staircase, and a long section of hallway that required them to walk bent halfway over, the corridor opened up to reveal another oak slab with a mighty iron lock. “Twiccian was certainly restrained,’ said Leonie. “There was only one death trap.” Her spirits were buoyed by the dearth of skeletons and by the sense of being close to their goal. The sooner she could be back in that nice dreary field the happier she would be. 

The door was broad and appeared to have been made from a single plank. It fitted the frame exactly, with no sliver for air or light. The lock was a fanciful bit of ironmongery made to look like the face of a crowing cock. Or possibly it was in mid-lecture on the subject of woodcarving or marble sculpture.

Cabal extracted a set of picks, inserted them into the bird’s mouth, and prodded at its esophagus: confidently, at first, then carefully, then with an intense focus, then with a quiet, burning malice until he swore and threw a pick at the floor. He was dismissed by Leonie, who levered and prodded and spat out quiet ladylike curses until she, also had to admit defeat. Cabal took over again, politely limiting his smugness to his facial expression. It was Leonie, however, who, lacking reading light, eventually descended far enough into boredom to find the hidden lever that released the final tumbler. Leonie felt no need to make smug faces at Cabal; his scowl was reward enough.

The second door was entirely iron and held a series of panels that had to be arranged in some sort of alchemical formula. Cabal sniffed and had them through it in short order. 

The third door was stone and quite featureless. After half an hour of tapping, banging, pushing it in various directions, and inspecting the walls for more levers, Cabal got impatient and decided to blow it up. Careful application of several substances from his supplies succeeded in fracturing it, at which point they discovered that the ceiling above the door was illusory, and the door was meant to be scaled and surmounted. The air in the hall was now filled with stone dust and unpleasant chemical smoke. The tunnel had been close and stale before, as if Twiccian begrudged even oxygen entering his private quarters.

The final door didn’t appear to be anything at all. There was an empty doorframe through which they could see a pleasant high-roofed chamber brightly lit by wall sconces. It held bookshelves loaded with volumes, a well-appointed bedroom, and to the side they could glimpse a gleaming lab area surrounded by loaded storage cupboards. Cabal had an arm out before Leonie could step through the frame. Once she was suspicious she could see something odd about the view through the doorframe; it wavered slightly, like the air above a bonfire. She pursed her lips. “What is that likely to be?”

Cabal took out a lens. The frame was lined with a fine white material that looked something like stone; it bore a bas-relief of minute repeated letters. Leonie noticed a small, repeated wavering in the air near the frame that suggested gas-jets. “Is it a gas?” She rocked back and forth trying to get some idea of depth.

“It could be. I believe it’s a ward enclosing some noxious or dangerous substance. The ward keeps it enclosed but permits passage through the substance, which presumably burns or dissolves or poisons the unwary.” As Cabal spoke, he brought out the Webley and waved Leonie back.

“Is that seriously your plan? Shoot it?”

“Not the ward, Miss Barrow. Or the substance between. I should, however, be able to fracture the lintel containing the ward, which should release the substance or effect.”

Leonie walked up and put a hand on the Webley, turning it gently towards the wall. “Mr. Cabal, I’m not sure you listened to what you just said. I’ll say it again; is that seriously your plan?”

Cabal looked at her hand as if it was a sea cucumber: unappealing, unexpected, and surplus to requirements. He lowered the gun and looked at her directly. “There is no time, Miss Barrow. We could peer at this all day, poke items into it, try to read the script, and find ourselves no wiser.” Still looking at her, he smoothly brought the gun up and fired before she could argue or prevent him. 

The runed plate fractured under the massive bullet, and the report was loud enough to dull both their hearing in the confined space. On the heels of the sound came the heat, a searing wave that tightened exposed skin and dried their eyes. Cabal buried his face in his arm and reflected that, despite the soundness of the general principle, another moment’s preparation would not have gone amiss. Leonie was still facing Cabal and was spared the worst of the heat on her face. They both felt the hot wind rip by them, and both dropped to the floor away from the worst of it. Face turned into the cool stone floor, Leonie coughed, fought to swallow, then said “brilliant, Cabal. I feel like an Egyptian mummy.”

“Actually,’ rasped Cabal, "that was one of the more desirable scenarios.” He sounded pleased. "I thought it might be heat; the ceramic focus for the wards suggested it. I also thought it was unlikely that Twiccian would put a poisonous gas or an unfriendly being so close to his rooms.”

“Did I ask you how clever you were? Let’s get this over with.' The attractive apartment was gone, and in its place they could see a large, crowded and dim room. "Is the room trapped?"

"Not that Twiccian mentioned. He is literally insane when it comes to his personal safety, but it would be unwise to assume anything. There may be traps tailored to attack only others, or which he trusts himself to avoid.” They proceeded through the door gingerly, taking care not to touch the ceramic which still radiated an intense heat. 

Before them there was a… Leonie hesitated to call it a ‘living area.” A subsistence area? There was a cot, a table, and a chair. A rough shelf and cupboard held tins of food and a few utensils. The cot was covered by a limp blanket and a dingy pillow hung off one side. Leonie felt an ugly pang of pity and disgust for the man who had nested in this hole, alone except for his monsters and minions and schemes for power. 

Cabal had already dismissed the living arrangements and had moved on to evaluating the rest of the room. Like the mirage, it held a lab and library. The lab was to the left, the floor sunk deeper than the rest of the room. Where Cabal had an operating table, Twiccian had a monumental stone slab carved with strange curling letters, but tastes differ. Its shelves held glassware, instruments, and supplies. Cabal’s fingers itched to rifle through the flasks and boxes of materials; surely Twiccian had his rarest and strangest items stored here. 

Both of them were arrested by the sight of the ritual of the rolling fire. A hoop of flame about ten feet across rested in midair in the lab. The flames were orange and white-hot, flaring unpredictably. Lying on the floor beside it was half a metal table, the edge melted to slag. Under the flames there was nothing but ash, molten metal, and heat-blasted stone. 

Cabal sent a longing look towards the bookshelves at the other end of the room as set his Gladstone on Twiccian’s dining table and searched for something. His face looked drawn in the torchlight. “How are you feeling?” asked Leonie. 

“Well enough.’ In truth, the encounters with Twiccian’s door system had drained him, and the unclean little cot was looking far too appealing. "Where… ah. Wedged… here it is.” Cabal withdrew a leather box which he unlatched and opened, glancing briefly at her. It contained a set of cushioned wax-sealed test tubes. She couldn’t see what they contained, but Cabal withdrew one that held a thick, gritty powder. 

“That’s it?”

“You were hoping for the ‘arcane romance of the occult?’ His smug smile really was appalling. She wouldn’t roll her eyes. "No. Creating a magical effect is complex, not disrupting one. ” He briefly reflected on the time a housefly had flown into his mouth while he was mid-incantation. The resultant gag reflex had interrupted the ritual, rendering the previous eighteen hours of preparation useless and ruining eighteen pungent tallow candles. 

“What is it?” she said, nodding at the test tube.

“Nothing terribly complicated or difficult to find.”

“And?”

“It must be applied from above to the centre of the ring. The particles will disrupt the reaction harmlessly."

“I only see one difficulty."

Cabal returned an enquiring look.

“My arms aren’t long enough to do it, Cabal, and you’re not that much taller than I am.”

A look and a quick mental measurement confirmed her assertion. He looked at her across the unpainted little table. It had crumbs wedged between the poorly-fitted boards. “What do you think?”

Leonie’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Cabal, are you asking my opinion?”

“Do you see anyone else here?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do it before.”

“This is not a situation which requires a great deal of specialized knowledge. It is possible you might contribute something of value. Please don’t trouble yourself if the exertion is too great, Miss Barrow.”

“Cabal, I’m moved. I think I’m going to weep while you gently pat my hand. Where is my hankie?”

Cabal sighed - or perhaps snarled, it came out somewhere between the two - and turned to the torus of fire. 

She relented. “Could you lift me?"

"Are you a gymnast? No? Neither am I. In my current state it’s far more likely I would dump you into the ritual, and before you ask, no, I don’t think you can lift me either.” Investigations found no furniture that could be lashed together into crane-like structures. “If the powder is too dispersed or is poured from too high, insufficient quantities of the powder will strike the centre. It must be within a few feet of the horizontal plane."

Leonie’s suggestion of a fishing-rod arrangement provoked a brief flurry of activity but was abandoned when no suitable substitute for a rod could be found. She was staring fixedly at the flames while Cabal rifled through Twiccian’s disturbing collection of instruments in the lab, looking for something that would be of use. The hoop had widened perceptibly even during the time they were there. Soon the increase would pick up speed and they would have to abandon it, praying they could get through the complex and out of town in time. And the snake might still be waiting beyond that damned insinuating door. Meanwhile, the circle was creeping outwards, making their job more difficult with every passing minute.

Leonie’s voice floated over the shelves. "Cabal, did you study the Romans in school?"

“Twice." The year before they emigrated and the year after, he thought absently, studying a three-pronged short-handled monstrosity and wondering what the devil Twiccian did with it. 

“Could we make an aqueduct?”

Cabal wearily threw the medical trident back into the gleaming drawer from which he’d drawn it, the careless gesture a measure of his fatigue and exasperation. The suggestion registered. “Some sort of supported tube or ramp down which to channel the powder to the centre. Hm.” They started to search for something to stabilize a tube. Twiccian had not been kind enough to leave swords, staves, rods, garden rakes, etc. around his quarters, or the “fishing rod” plan might have been attempted.

Leonie brought a piece of blank parchment she’d picked up from Twiccian’s table and approached the rolling fire. She tore a strip and held it near the flames; at that temperature, paper would brown, turn brittle, and possibly flame, but parchment is made from scraped lamb or calfskin. It yellowed, but did not flame until she brought it close. 

By the time she turned back Cabal was at the miserable dining room table with a motley collection of loose sheets of parchment. He was staring at them. He slowly brought out his flick knife, made a short slice into the top sheet, and began to fold. Leonie watched as the item took shape: a tube with extra folds for stability, a v-shaped channel on one side, and a neat slit on one end that allowed it to link securely with a second tube: modular origami. Will wonders never cease, thought Leonie, and went to look for some way of reinforcing the system. The parchment was tough but would tend to sag over the length of tubing they would require. 

The first aid kit supplied an adhesive tape, and Leonie repurposed Twiccian’s writing instruments and disassembled a fan (of all the peculiar things to find here, she thought) for further structural support. They looked at the assembled delivery system. She laughed. “What a ludicrous item.”

Cabal sniffed. “If it doesn’t work, we should redirect our efforts to finding a way past the snake. That flaring at the edges is troubling. Let’s hope we won’t be cut in half.” They dampened the exterior of the parchment with water and dragged the dining table to the side of the seething, sparkling ring of flame. Kneeling, Cabal extended the tube over it, and Leonie carefully unsealed the test tube and poured the contents in. They could see a long line of black tumble about half-way down through the half-translucent parchment and come to rest. 

Glancing at Cabal, who was straining to keep the parchment extended over the flames, steady, and high enough not to combust, Leonie reached out and tapped the lower channel of the tube; the powder shifted. She tapped again, farther down; it shifted again, and some fell into the apparently empty centre of the ritual. The flames seethed and sparked, licking at the table and drying the dampened tube. An errant spark hit the tube a foot or more beyond reach, and the parchment started to smoulder, a bright circle of red blooming outwards which left behind a circle of charred black; it would quickly be eaten through.

Leonie tapped the tube urgently, causing the end to waver and spill powder in a wider arc, but it couldn’t be helped. As the spark worked its way outwards she gave it a last rap. Another puff of powder spilled from the end as the tube became too charred to bear its own weight, spilling the remainder across the floor. The flames licked up, sparks showered, and the flames surged out, carbonising the two nearest table legs. The updraft of searing air made the wind from the door ward seem like a summer's breeze by comparison, scouring exposed skin and stealing breath from their lungs. Leonie's hair and their clothing flapped in the updraft as they both fell towards the heat-blasted ground. 

They collapsed on the splintered remains of the table. “Ouch!” Leonie examined her calf with a pained expression. It had touched the floor under the ring, and a painful blister was already raising. 

“Superficial,’ noted Cabal, quite unconcerned, as he picked himself up. “If you will forgive a personal comment, Miss Barrow, trousers would have been a more practical choice for this activity.” 

Leonie grabbed his unoffered arm to steady herself as she clambered off the remains of the table. “Pot, kettle, Cabal. At least I’m in boots. Additionally, I don’t want to be stoned for transvestism by backwards villagers. Was that it?”

“Yes. I will select a few volumes from Twiccian’s collection, as agreed, and then we will evolve a strategy to deal with the crypt-worm upstairs. It should be relatively simple, forewarned and with the laboratory at our disposal.”

He had been speaking to Leonie, but his eyes were already on the bookshelves. How characteristic, she thought. A small smile dawned, and a little flush of pleasure rose to his face. He looked at the cracked and dogeared volumes as someone else might look at a baby, a basket of fuzzy kittens, or a gift-wrapped gold bar. She followed him to the bookcase in time to see his blue-grey eyes light with pleasure at a title. He reached for the massive book with two hands, and as his left glove grazed it a dark mist leapt from the bookcase itself. It soaked into Cabal’s sleeve and glove, and his expression transformed to horror as he stripped away the black kid leather to find a web adhering to his skin. It formed a raised circle on the back of his hand, gnarled like tree roots over the forest floor. Tendrils extended down his wrist, vanishing under his cuff. He stared at the mark, unwilling to touch it and desperate to remove it. 

He found his voice; he was pleased it didn’t shake. “Run, Miss Barrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks for your patience; this chapter fought me! I got so blocked I apparently had to go write some Leonie/Cabal slash just to get past it. 
> 
> Two more chapters, kind readers, and they will come comparatively soon.


	8. And We Shall Play a Game of Chess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal and Leonie have accomplished what they came for, but Twiccian's lair has a final deadly trap.

“What the hell is going on?' Leonie asked. Cabal had taken her arm and was towing her towards the doorway. For someone so formal, she thought, he did drag one places. She stopped. “You’re not going to bundle me out the door like a piece of baggage. Explain. What’s that on your hand?” She stared up at him angrily, trying to read his expression. She followed his darting glances towards the lab and saw the air thickening and distorting as if something was trying to stretch through a weak spot.

“A creature is being summoned. This,” he raised his clenched hand, veined with the strange mark, “identifies me as the one who triggered the ward. I am about to be eaten, and it is unlikely to be an edifying spectacle. I recommend you make other plans. You are unmarked, and it may not pursue you.” He shoved the Gladstone towards her. She looked at it, uncomprehending. "Get as far away as you can. Come back in a few hours and find something in the lab to disable the crypt-worm upstairs; it didn’t like the acid trap.” He was intent, as if he wanted to be sure she understood. The mark shifted and seethed under his skin.

“Don’t I get a say? Maybe I want to see you violently torn limb from limb. I think they call it closure."

“This is not the time for flippancy. Something hideous is about to come through, and I am wasting vital time.” 

And why was he doing that? God, she was exhausted: tired from the fear and the running and the fighting. Gritty dust stuck to her bare skin and her sensible, sweaty tweed suit. Her eyes ached from the smoke, and she really did not want to face another abomination from beyond. She fisted her hands in her pockets. From most points of view he rather had this coming, didn’t he? She could take his advice, survive, leave the lair, wait on the train platform alone in the predawn light. She could leave Johannes Cabal behind, under a field in Tedmoor forever. 

She didn’t know who he was, now. That was normally considered an unsettling feeling, but in the case of Johannes Cabal it was a substantial improvement. 

Next to the massive summoning circle the air was taking on a colour, uneven and mobile.

He was obviously near the end of his endurance; he was sweating, and there was a hint of a tremor in the peremptory hand holding out the Gladstone. His adrenaline would surely give out soon. “I mean, look at you’ she said. "You can barely stand up." 

A hint of perplexity joined his scowl. She continued. “I’m not marked, so it may not want me. Maybe I can help. And so help me, Johannes, if you make some pitiful attempt to drag me, push me, or pick me up, I will do my level best to wound you with that pea-shooter you gave me, even if it takes all night.” 

Frustration and distain crossed his face, but he controlled himself. He sneered, turned on his heel, and walked back to the bookcase. "If you want to throw your life away, it's no concern of mine."

“Don’t misunderstand me, I realize this is a terrible decision,' she called at his back, following him to the library area, kicking aside a stepping stool to relieve some of her feelings. “I’m fully aware."

“Look for anything with the word ‘demon’ in the title,” he barked. "And for pity's sake, do not touch it.” He half-fell into the chair at Twiccian’s desk and pulled items out of the Gladstone. He poured a test tube of clear liquid over his arm to no visible result. His mutterings might have been some sort of spell, but they sounded Germanic as well as profane. 

The scalpel could not cut the veins and threads of the mark, even in the places it arched free of his skin. Cabal tugged at it experimentally with his other hand. It parted from the skin with ease, like an omelette sliding out of a pan, the holes it left in his skin sealing themselves rapidly. Immediately it swarmed over the hand which held it and reburied itself in his other arm. Wonderful. He could move it. How helpful. He glanced up; Leonie had seen the exchange amid her shelf search and was looking mildly sickened.

A sound was coming from the lab, a shuddering hum of manifestation. 

Leonie was scanning the shelves desperately, her hands behind her back like a a little girl in a shop. The books were in a variety of languages, human and otherwise, and not all of them had titles marked on the spine. "Cabal, here-“ She pointed. He rose to get it, but too quickly, and his head spun. She did not miss the betraying wobble. 

“Ah. You may have found it.” He rifled through the book, a ragged collection of smaller texts bound together, paper and vellum, new and crumbling, grey print and thick black, a hodgepodge of scripts and systems. He settled on a page containing no script, just a diagram, formulae, and a note in fountain-pen ink written in a tiny, precise hand. But he was no longer reading the page. "Too late.”

And it was there. Its mass was on the order of a killer whale, but it was feline in its proportions and sleekness. It saw them and bared its broad, pointed teeth. Short, he thought, for tearing and puncturing power, like a shark’s. The other demons he had seen were at least partially anthropomorphic - but this one was entirely bestial. Its brown-black pelt was interrupted by patches and streaks of slick bare skin or membrane which rippled and slid over smooth muscle and unorganized-looking joints.

Cabal rarely felt underarmed. The Webley's distinctive scale inspired respect in anything smaller than a sofa, but it would only distract this creature. Just now he wished he had an elephant gun. Even this thing, he felt, would have to respect an elephant gun. However, he could only employ the tools at hand. He cleared his throat and began a peremptory series of commands. “…come, therefore, peaceably and affably; come visibly and without delay; manifest that which I desire. Thomatos, Benesser, Flianter. Litan, Izer, Osnas” he concluded with growing uncertainty as it produced no effect. The demon regarded him with amused tolerance. There was a pause.

“You cannot summon me. I am here already.” The voice was deep but musical, perhaps feminine. The demon's mobile lips articulated the English words clearly despite its inhuman mouth and dentition.

“It was an off-the-cuff effort.”

“Pardon me,’ said Leonie. “May anyone join this conversation? And may I ask your business?"

The demon nodded. "I am in partnership with one Arthur Twiccian, whose pitiful mortal habitation we now occupy. He disposes of his rivals, I ingest them. I am a magiphage, an eater of magi, that is; Twiccian has fed four or five to me over the years - ambitious men who came for his books or his life."

“You eat necromancers."

“By choice. The magic is the nutritious part."

"So?” She did not quite gesture invitingly in Cabal's direction, but her general import was clear. 

A self-indulgent smile fit strangely on its predator's face. "I like to play a little first. You won't tell Twiccian, will you." It sounded more like a prediction than a request.

Cabal reentered the conversation with the air of a man correcting a bureaucrat about his property line. “I have been told more than once; Hell does not want me dead.” 

The demon inclined its head and assumed a mildly disputatious expression. “They’re of two minds about it Below. Some think you’ve gone soft and we should get you while the getting’s good. I believe the leadership still want you in play, but…' its side seethed and heaved in a shrug. "Oversight is notoriously sloppy. Hell is chaos. And you are my rightful prey, magus."

“Don't call me that. And there is no demon tasked with eating necromancers. I would have heard."

“It is… more of a hobby. A secondary aspect of my demonic portfolio.”

Cabal snorted. “That means you’re one of the hundreds who arrange peep shows for sexually retarded occultists, or help them find buried coins. I am sick and tired of the condescending attitudes of supernatural beings who have done nothing for centuries but exploit narrow veins of power to feed human weakness and tarnish a few souls. You should be ashamed of your boring little minds."

“It’s a living. Are you finished stalling or do I have to endure more of your sophomoric insults?"

He had been stalling. He loathed this incanation. The ones in dead languages were so much less embarrassing. One may as well get a bad job over with quickly. "Hear, spirit, for I shall bind you…” 

It sighed and waved a paw. “I keep telling Twiccian to move the book, but he's a fascist about his shelving system. I don’t really mind. I enjoy the little struggles, or it’s all over too soon. Yes, yes, I’ll tell you my bindings.'

"I'll say this for Twiccian, he's thorough." It sounded disgusted. "The bindings are five, and I name them thusly: iuvaram, the binding of mastery; murtam, the binding of form; karanam, the binding of cause; annam, the binding of prey; kalam, the binding of time."

Cabal was surprised. "Was the annam performed by Twiccian?"

"No. It is inherent.”

He nodded. A necromancer would naturally have qualms about a creature which ate only members of his profession, but demons like this one, who could manifest independently of a caster’s will, were rare, and one’s rivals tended to be necromancers as well. As for the bindings, you couldn't say Twiccian didn't do quality work. "You must obey his mental or verbal commands, keep this form, manifest yourself only when the shelf ward is triggered, eat only necromancers, and may stay only for a certain period of time. What is the time limit?"

It grinned. "Ample. But you're being dull.” It flowed across the room to the library, weaving through the furniture with surprising grace. Leonie had time to take one step back before it swatted Cabal across the room.

After the impact, Cabal took a moment to think through the likely events of the next minute and a half. This was not going well. The book had revealed the creature’s name, but his attempt to summon it into the prison of the circle had failed. It had indulged itself so far, but the hungry glint in its eye was growing, and he knew he couldn’t stall much longer. Leonie hauled him to his feet as the monster watched them both. He would be eaten, she would flee, and presuming the demon didn’t eat her, she should be sufficiently equipped to get out of Twiccian’s lair. He could leave her one more thing. He sagged suddenly and then pushed her away, jostling her coat. 

The demon savoured the moment, the prey desperate and still wriggling against their fate. It felt the tug of the mark, pleasantly pulling on its temporary body. It wondered if one of them would break and run. It wanted its leap to terminate at the necromancer’s neck, neatly snapping it and potentially tearing the head clean off in one fluid motion. Then it would sip the dissipating power as the body cooled and perhaps kill the girl, if she was still close enough. Then back to the margins to drift and coil and wait for the next summoning. It was a good life. 

The woman had taken the necromancer's arm as if trying to support him. He was angry with her and tried to snarl menacingly, but he was weak and could only manage a sort of grousing. She flung his wrist back at him and stamped off, and the creature pulled itself into the final tension before the leap.

Suddenly its sense of direction lurched, and it tumbled in an undignified heap, emitting a coughing growl of surprise. "What in the name of His Infernal Undergarments was that?" It slid to its feet and was at Cabal's side in a second, his terrified flinch arrested by the demon's sudden and strangely delicate hold on his wrist. A serrated claw sprang forth and sliced up his sleeve as neatly as a scalpel, baring an arm marked only by two ugly, ill-sewn wounds. The mark was gone.

The demon extended its forked tongue and flicked it the stitches. It made a face and swiped its tongue over its flat nose and cheeks vigorously, as if trying to wipe the flavour from it. "Incurred for another? But still, even that would never...." Its gaze slitted and its nose twitched. Cabal and the demon stared at Leonie with expressions of mixed accusation and disbelief. Her white cheeks and her grip on her forearm told the story, and on her hand was the raised mark.

"It can be taken?" The demon was baffled. Flummoxed. Hundreds of years of eating necromancers, and it thought every dodge had been attempted. Holy water. Burning. Acid. Amputation. Forcing or duping someone else to accept it. None of it ever worked. Oh, the mark could shift, but only on the necromancer, and it was more of a joke than anything. No-one had ever tried to take it before. 

“What…’ the demon tried to remember everything it knew about human brains. “Do you think he… loves you? Is that it?”

Caught off-guard, she guffawed. “No! No. God, no.’ She studied Cabal. Through his wooziness and exhaustion and shock, she thought she saw a hint of relief. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Johannes. You ass.’ She turned back to the demon. Holding the mark through her sleeve made her feel better, except when it moved, and it hid her shaking hands. “It’s hard to say. I thought I’d have a better chance of getting out of this than him. And I don't want him dead. He could do some good, if he wanted, and I think I want to see what he’ll do. 

“So,’ she said, moving back to the agenda, "am I your 'rightful prey?' “ 

The demon didn't react for a moment, standing on three paws, still recovering. "Well, no, but hang on. There's a way around this. There always is."

"I don’t believe we're obliged to wait until you to think of it. Come on, Johannes." And bold as brass, she picked up her bag and walked for the doors. 

The demon looked at Cabal, hoping the necromancer would share some of the awkwardness of the situation, but he was avoiding its eyes, being more engaged in picking up his Gladstone without toppling over. The demon rather thought the necromancer was trying to hide a smile. It flowed between them and the exit. "I cannot feed off you, woman, but I can at least have a bit of a game..." it sniffed "... Leonie. There's nothing to stop me from killing you in a more pedestrian way. Then, perhaps the mark will return to the necromancer."

Damn. "Any ideas, Cabal?” She stood in the lab, Cabal near the library. The sensation of the mark under her skin made her sick; it flexed subtly and plucked gently at tendons and muscles.

He paused, shrugged, and raised his gun at her. "My apologies, Miss Barrow. If you die while you are marked, I believe the summoning will be broken. The mark is a demonic symbiote contained by a weak ward in the bookshelf; it allows this demon to manifest. If you die before you are eaten, I believe it will banish the demon.” 

For a sliver of a moment her mind raced as her hopes, never very high, fell. She had known not to get between him and safety. She remembered the raw April evening, his dreary little office on the carnival train, the giant barrel of the Webley pointing at her face…. what the hell was in his hand? It was a gun the size of an ambitious cigarette lighter. Her coat was heavier on her right side. Much heavier. She inclined her head slightly towards the demon and Cabal nodded downwards as if he was sighting down the pinkie-sized barrel. Leonie assumed an expression of horror and dismay while planning the next two seconds. 

Cabal sweated. This part of the plan depended entirely on her. If they had a few moments, if the symbiote wasn’t adapted to non-magical humans, humans with souls, good humans, if she saw through his bluff as she was meant to….

She did not hesitate. One hand into her coat pocket, second hand up to steady the massive gun, stance and arms adjusted to take the sharp upward kicks of the recoil from the high barrel, and she sent every bullet in the Webley into the creature's horizontally slitted eyes. Her aim was true, and through ears dulled by the gun’s reports they heard the beast growl in its throat as it pawed at its screwed-shut lids. Cabal peppered its side with shots from the Browning, little crackling sounds after the Webley's deep bark, as he crossed to where she stood in the lab. 

He crouched, and she squatted down next to him. “Put this on.' He handed her a surgical glove for her right hand. He seemed about to grab her wrist again, but instead offered his hand, palm up. She took it in her left, and with his other hand he neatly rolled up her sleeve to expose the mark. 

"You need to remove it. If I touch it, it may return to me.’ She regarded her arm without enthusiasm. “I believe it will hurt a great deal," he said. The demon, its eyes closed and still yowling, barrelled around the space, knocking bookcases and tables over and demolishing tables and shelving. The room rang with the sound of shattering glass, clanging lab ware and tumbling furniture.

It surely did hurt. Leonie pinched a raised blue-purple vein and pulled. It parted from her skin and muscles, but slowly, hanging on and trailing electric lines of pain behind as it was torn free. It had tugged when she’d taken it from Cabal - she had rather thought he’d feel it, but she supposed he had been distracted by planting the Webley in her pocket. She pulled inexorably as inches of the awful thing came out of her arm. She wondered if she was doing permanent damage.

The demon howled and fell on its side, twisting and convulsing. She gasped and tears ran down her face steadily as long blue strands of it were exposed, leaving little holes in her skin where the tendrils had burrowed in. 

Cabal was repeating something she couldn’t understand. It might be helping but he didn’t appear to be sure either. For a minute they bent over the same task. Leonie’s face was set in a grimace of pain, tears running down her cheeks. Cabal was intent, reciting the banishment and holding her hand tightly against the pull of the symbiote. The demon blundered around in the enclosed space, mad with its own pain or hoping to trample them. It spoke, its voice shaking with hatred.

“Little forked things. Naberius and I held these halls before you were born. Kings and great sorcerers begged for our power, and we aided or devoured them as we saw fit. You tremble and crawl in the dirt, and I shall make you beg for death for this insult.” Still blinded, it stumbled to a wall and began to quarter the room systematically. It would find them.

Cabal’s grip on her hand was firm, meant to restrain her arm against the pull of removing the mark, but his palm was cool and real, and it steadied her. His hand was calloused, probably from shovelling grave dirt, she thought hazily through the pain. He didn’t look at her, but at the last ragged filaments of the mark tearing free, contracting and waving in the air. Leonie could have sworn there were bits of her sticking to it. “Throw it into the summoning circle!” he ordered.

Leonie did so, and as the tangle of flexing blue tentacles hit the floor, Cabal shot it with the Browning. Whether it was the bullet or the sudden metaphysical barrier of the circle, it flashed and was gone. Instantly, the room was silent. The demon was gone as if it had never been there.

Ten minutes later, Leonie and Cabal were sitting on the floor as he bandaged her arm. She had distained Twiccian’s grubby little bed, so Cabal was cross-legged on the dusty stones and she half-knelt as he worked on the wounds. She wept from exhaustion and pain while he cleaned the awful punctures out. She had tried to hide it at first, but he hadn’t been particularly bothered, so she turned half-away and sobbed as the tears ran down her face and blouse. Her shoulders shook and her stomach ached, but she kept her arm steady, and he had proceeded methodically. Now he was wrapping the whole mess in gauze. At least it looked better, even if the bleeding didn’t want to stop. “Have you finished crying?”, he asked.

His voice wasn't cruel, just curious. She nodded. The tears had stopped, but her breath would take some time to stop hitching. He handed her a clean men’s undershirt to dry her face. It was indecorous, he thought, but both their handkerchiefs were dubious at this point, and the bandages should be saved until they emerged from this hellhole. He ignored a nagging feeling that he should say something encouraging. 

He cast a longing glance at the overturned shelves as he secured the end of the gauze. He didn’t dare touch them. It was the bitterest thing, to leave without raiding Twiccian’s books. The demon had likely been banished instead of destroyed, and the ward might have reset itself somehow, and it would return with a newly made body.

Leonie had finished blotting her tears and was looking at him. He wondered what she expected him to say. She had risked a great deal to save him, and he hadn’t entirely followed the reasons she gave the demon. He didn’t think the demon had, either. She had made no demands upon him, but he felt uneasy. He had saved her on the Princess Hortense, but that had been a matter between himself and his soul, and hadn’t truly been done for her. Perhaps this was the same. Still, he felt an incursion on his carefully guarded isolation, like an alert from his home's perimeter wards. It was not entirely unwelcome. He was disturbed. 

He could not escape the conclusion that he had changed, was still changing. The return of his soul had been the catalyst, but perhaps maturity had altered him. He could not escape time, but his purpose had not changed, and it never would. That was as certain as the scientific method and the paths of the stars. 

Leonie still watched him. Again, he tried the truth. “I would not have been able to remove the symbiote. It was too well-attuned to a necromancer.” Leonie nodded again. 

They broke into Twiccian’s emergency stores. He chiefly seemed to fear being without stale water and tins of beans. Cabal selected some unbroken glass bottles and large flasks of chemicals from Twiccian’s stores, and they bid the chaos of glass, splintered wood, and upset furniture good-bye, passed out through the doors and back into the maze of corridors which seemed positively hospitable by comparison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Voila; I hope you enjoyed it. A concluding chapter (blessedly light on plot and action) will follow.


	9. Summer Surprised Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal and Leonie have a chat and then part ways. We follow one of them home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains passing references to a earlier meeting from my story “Revere thy Roof, and to Thy Guests be Kind.”

Sundown found Leonie and Cabal drinking tea in a belated sandwich bar by the train station. She had taken a pill for the pain - an aspirin, not the nameless pink tablet Cabal had offered once they were clear of the lair. He had not taken anything. They had emerged, astonishingly, into daylight; it felt like it should have been night by now, if not dawn. She had never been so happy to have the cold wet wind on her face or feel dewy grass on her ankles as they walked back to the road.

They faced each other over the table. Cabal’s plate was pushed neatly to the side, and Leonie was still making her way through half the menu. She was ravenous, and Cabal could raise an eyebrow if he liked. He didn’t. He had been unusually polite, which was to say silent on their walk here. She was tolerably certain he wasn't considering killing her. 

The chill electric light showed up the bloodstains and stone dust. The hard-faced owner was uninquisitive, but Leonie felt conspicuous: scratched, torn, and alone with a man at night. She and Cabal had eventually fallen into talking: nothing about the last few days but about the wreck of the Princess Hortense and after. "Have you ever actually informed on me to the police, Miss Barrow?”

She looked up from her soup. "Once, after I was rescued in Senza. It was two or three days afterwards, in the hospital."

"Odd that it was never publicised." 

She shrugged. 

"And never here?”

"No.”

"Why not?”

She raised a hand, caught the sullen eye of the owner and ordered more tea with a polite smile. She was insatiably thirsty, and it might keep her awake until the train arrived. She examined an oyster cracker. "No-one ever asked, for one thing. And life at the university is uncomfortable enough without our acquaintance being public knowledge. It might have been different if I’d known where they could find you. Why do you ask?”

“Idle curiosity: one of my failings. Yes, Miss Barrow, it is far down the list, I know."

He was right about his curiosity. She practically had to drag him out of Twiccian’s rooms; he seemed prepared to fuss over the spilled supplies and bent instruments indefinitely. After a bracing little exchange of opinions, Cabal had agreed they were both in poor condition, and an exit from the chamber of horrors might be well-advised.

He had mixed a powerful bone solvent (a formula he had by memory, it seemed) which they had bottled and taken to the door where the skeleton snake waited. Opening the thick door they found it waiting stupidly for them, its skull pressed nearly against the wood. It was relatively simple to fling the fragile bottles at it and close the door as they shattered. They would wait in the library until the sounds of thrashing subsided and then repeat the procedure until it was done. Cabal inventoried the unpromising shelves while they waited and scornfully selected a few volumes to take back, more on general principle than because he wanted them.

Finally, they could pick their way through the hissing and stinking piles of bone to the labyrinth. Cabal led them out as unhesitatingly as he had led them in. The ascent up the rope was exquisitely painful for them both.

Leonie had been unsure even this unprepossessing restaurant would have them, but Cabal had walked to a table and installed himself, blandly oblivious to the antagonistic look the man behind the counter gave them. She had ordered in her most educated accent. “You’re going to go back, aren’t you?” she asked, pushing her soup bowl away and reaching for the roast beef sandwiches.

“Possibly. Twiccian owes me a book.”

“Do you think you can defeat the demon?”

“With foreknowledge and proper preparation, yes. Or I might be able to avoid triggering the ward.’ He finished his tea and didn’t find any more in his pot. The owner was avoiding Cabal’s summons. "How far did you get in tracing my home?”

Leonie finished her sandwich before replying. "Your letter, the one about my soul, had a postmark. You likely use a mail service, but it started me thinking. Your appearance at dad’s house in the summer suggested you don't live terribly far, given the state you were in. Yesterday you said something that suggested you don’t live near here. Then, when you left the hospital…’ she grimaced. "The ticket clerk was amenable to bribery and a portrayal of an anxious wife.' She caught the owner's eye. "Might we get some more tea for the gentleman, please? And lemon.” The grunt of assent suggested that tea and lemon would be provided for the scarlet hussy.

Cabal had spent time cultivating a subtle air of menace, purely as a practical measure. Being able to project a subliminal stink of violence and unpredictability smoothed paths and, among other things, meant he wasn't kept waiting for his tea. It wasn’t working today. He examined his watch. He could be home before dawn, check on the experiments, clean up, and sleep for a few hours before starting a day’s work. 

Leonie raised a brow at the watch. “I’m going to start thinking you’re bored, Cabal. Is it the company?”

“I am estimating when I can be back at work."

"Dogs to feed? Cats to let in? A sinister monkey to oversee?"

He rubbed his forehead. “Everyone has to bring up Svensson and his monkey. No. Experiments to monitor. Books to read. A return visit to plan. My life is generally a quiet one."

A steel bowl of lemon slices clattered on the table. The owner wanted Cabal to know where he stood on the subject of suit-wearing arseholes who asked for Assam tea and sneered at his seafood salad sandwiches. And who was he to look all high and mighty, consorting as he was with a fast woman (who well-mannered as she may be, looked like she'd been dragged through the gutter) in a god-fearing town like Tedmoor.

The owner returned to his counter and pretended not to watch the young couple. They were failing to live up to his expectations for good-for-nothing, dancing, drinking young people. The man had a face like a wet Wednesday and watched the woman narrowly. She was pretty, but the owner rather thought she should have been wearing some sort of red frock instead of tweeds, and smoking a cigarette. 

They were old enough that decent folk would have been married by their age, but neither wore a ring, and they were obviously not married to each other - no man had to look that hard at a woman he’d married, unless something had gone very wrong - but they were on good enough terms. Girls who came in with young men generally didn’t order a soup, a vegetable, two sandwiches, and an ice unless they wanted farmhand jokes, even with their brothers. And while the man had a filthy look for him whenever he walked by the table, when he looked at her it was careful, not nasty. 

The owner washed his hands of it. He took up a broom and started to sweep the floor meaningfully. The man smiled at him. Whatever was going on between the two of them was very modern, and not welcome in his respectable sandwich bar. You get all sorts, he thought, by the train station.

***

They took the same train out of town. Cabal took a window seat and set himself to stare down every tree between the station and their destination. Leonie took the seat next to him, staring at the upholstery opposite. They were pressed into their seats as the train pulled away from the station, and they felt the soothing rhythm of wheels on tracks. For such a disaster, he thought, it had actually gone fairly well. He and Leonie had worked smoothly together. Indeed (he tried not to smile at the window) the demon hadn't quite known what hit it once she had taken charge of the situation. But he didn't like the idea of the demon continuing under Twiccian's control. And he owed Twiccian more than a raided library.

And what did he owe Miss Barrow? Nothing, perhaps. Gratitude, maybe, though it was not his forté. He had noted her change towards him. No threats, fewer insults. She had lost some of her untempered idealism, if not her goodness. Although it the idea seemed peculiar to him, he thought she might not hate him. But what could he do, invite her over for tea? Never mind the psychotic pixies, Leonie, and no, don’t look in the box on the mantlepiece, and how is your father? And was he to be distracted from his work for _social reasons_? It would never do. But something half-starved within him groaned, before he compressed it into silence.

Leonie drowsed, by degrees, and meditated on the subject of Johannes Cabal. She remembered him arriving, injured and hunted, at the Barrow threshold and the moment she had invited him in, and with him a world of danger for her and her father. She was tempted to make excuses for him now, but it would be the purest wishful thinking. Almost without intending it, she continued out loud. “It’s bothered me, you know, the way I ran you off last summer. I can’t imagine why, after you put us in danger without even asking. I’d do it again. But….” 

Cowed trees whipped through Cabal’s line of sight. He said to the window, “it was justified.” She glanced at his profile, silhouetted against the dim glass. He was still wearing his tinted spectacles and the side-baffles hid his eyes in the evening light. He said nothing else. She pressed on; she felt like she was approaching a skittish cat, not a heavily-armed necromancer. 

“If you ever changed your mind about my interviewing you, I would hide your identity. Or if you. If you wanted to talk, Johannes. You could write.”

"I do not recall giving you permission to use my given name, Miss Barrow.” And then, more honestly, "what do we have to discuss?” 

“I would have thought we had more subject matter for conversation than most, Mr. Cabal. " But then, more kindly, "never mind.” The train carried them further into the dark until Cabal thought she had fallen asleep. He wished he had something other than rudeness to fall back upon. He had a natural aptitude for rudeness, found it pleasurable as well as useful in keeping the officious and stupid at bay. But now he wished he had something else with which to turn away Leonie Barrow. 

Unexpectedly, she broke the long silence. "I don't really want to know where you live, Cabal. If I did, I might have to tell the police. But I wouldn't mind... I don't know what. Hearing from you. Knowing you're well. You're oddly restful company, when you aren’t being too much yourself.”

The faint breath from the window might have been a laugh.

Leonie huddled in her seat as if she was cold, though her coat was spread over her knees. His overcoat was slung over the seat across from him. He could put it over her. He looked out the window and watched the fields blankly. His soul ached these days, except when he was in his laboratory. It was like a weather-wise knee or the return of blood to hypothermic limbs.  
 _April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers._

***

Cabal surmounted the cellar stairs and stared at his kitchen absently, as if he had forgotten what it was for. The past three days had been spent in recovering some of the time lost in his Tedmoor adventure. He had scarcely eaten or slept, but the hours had vanished in the lab. His head pounded from fumes and close study of bad type. Now he was starving, bristly, and exhausted. So. He bathed. He shaved. He catalogued the limited options in the pantry and reminded himself to add a grocer's order to his plans for the next day. While he ate his eggs and beans he thought of Twiccian's vast crates of tins. That would be convenie- no. No, no, no. 

Something made him shiver. He looked at his footprints on the tile. There was a pathway from the cellar to the kitchen to the stairs which led to his bedchamber. The house was sullenly quiet, except for the dead things and the grandfather clock in the hall. An unnamed emotion seized him. There was dedication, he thought, and then there was mania. What had Twiccian been like, when he was only half-mad?

He could think up some pretext to see Parkin, he thought, and then rejected the idea with loathing. He would descend into dribbling dementia, he thought venomously, before he petitioned the village constable for companionship. Well, then what? 

He had an idea. He dismissed it. He considered it, and dismissed it again. Then, while still pretending to himself that he had dismissed it, he went upstairs to Horst's old room. 

It had been made over into a guest room after its occupant’s departure for university, but some of his possessions were still in the cupboard. Cabal ignored the skeleton on the bed (no relation), found a chess set, and brought it down to the table in the parlour. He set it up. 

He sat in his chair by the fireplace, then he mentally placed Miss Barrow in the chair opposite. He considered his opponent. Her mind, her likely style of play. The box on the mantelpiece hummed something happily. In the dark, the garden fairies were whetting their tiny blades and singing about organ meats. 

A short time later he sat at his father's desk in the library and took out a sheet of notepaper.

Miss Barrow;  
Pawn to King’s four.  
regards,  
C.

He addressed the envelope to the women’s residence at the university. He would send it with the grocer’s boy the next day, who would dispatch it to his mail service. In two days, possibly three, he might hear back; the thought was soothing. He had enjoyed Leonie's theoretical presence. Tomorrow, he would start to plan his return to Twiccian's lair. Possibly with his bicycle and a small trunk. An unaccustomed peace settled over the house in the valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kind attention to this story; it's the most challenging I've attempted so far, and I hope you've enjoyed it. Let me know! I may write another story in this continuity some day.
> 
> Thanks to my husband for allowing me to base Twiccian upon his legendary (to us) character Twitchy the Lich, and apologies and thanks to T.S. Eliot, to whose poem _The Waste Land_ I've returned again and again when considering the fractured and fractious necromancer Johannes Cabal. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."


End file.
